The Pope released his people from the oath of allegiance they had sworn to Stanislas. This step of the Holy Father, taken at the right time, and supported by Augustus’s forces, had no small weight in establishing the interests of the Court of Rome in Poland, where they then had no wish to dispute with the sovereign pontiff the chimerical right of meddling with the temporalities of kings. Every one was ready to submit to Augustus’s authority again, and received without the least opposition a useless absolution which the Nuncio did not fail to represent as necessary. Charles’s power and the greatness of Sweden were now drawing to their last phase. For some time more than ten crowned heads had viewed the extension of Sweden beyond her natural boundaries, to the other side of the Baltic, and from the Duna to the Elbe, with fear and envy. Charles’s fall and absence awakened the interests and jealousy of all these princes, after they had lain dormant for a long time through treaties and inability to break them. The Czar, who was more powerful than them all together, making the best use of his victory, took Wibourg, and all Carelia, inundated Finland with troops, besieged Riga, and sent a corps into Poland to help Augustus to recover the throne. The Emperor was then what Charles had once been--the arbiter of Poland and the North; but he consulted only his own interests, whereas Charles’s ambitions were always of glory or vengeance. The Swedish monarch had helped his friends, and overcome his enemies, without exacting the smallest reward for his victories; but the Czar, rather a prince than a hero, would not help the King of Poland except on condition that Livonia should be given up to him, and that this province, for the sake of which Augustus had begun war, should belong to the Russians for ever. The King of Denmark, forgetting the treaty of Travendal as Augustus had that of Altranstadt, had from that time thoughts of making himself master of the Duchies of Holstein and Bremen, to which he renewed his claim. The King of Prussia had long-standing claims to Swedish Pomerania which he wished to revive; the Duke of Mecklenburg was provoked at seeing Sweden still in possession of Wismar, the finest city in his duchy. This Prince had married the Emperor of Russia’s niece, and his uncle was only looking for an excuse to establish himself in Germany, after the example of the Swedes. George, Elector of Hanover, also wanted to enrich himself from the spoiling of Charles. This Bishop of Munster, too, would have been glad to have made some claims had he possessed the means to do so. There were about 12,000 or 13,000 Swedes defending Pomerania, and the other districts which Charles held in Germany; here was the seat of war. But this storm alarmed the Emperor and his allies. It is a law of the Empire that whoever invades one of the provinces should be considered an enemy to the whole Germanic body.